Quaker Redemption
What do you do in Meeting for Worship?
This is quite a frequent question when someone discovers I’m a Quaker, and that a Meeting for Worship isn’t like their more usual experience of a religious service. It is an hour of silence, or stillness, or expectant waiting – however you want to describe it.
There are lots of serious, thoughtful words written (some by me) about this experience, and how it has changed lives, expectations etc. etc.
But there are also times when something appears in your mind that is not overtly serious, sober or earnest…
When your mind wanders freely, scurries into corners, spirals into worries about things from the trivial (must remember to buy milk on the way home) to the serious (what can I do about xxxx) and everything in between.
Some folks do not like to speak of redemption because it seems to require abject self-blame, an admission that we deserve punishment even as we ask for mercy. But the redemption I am speaking of is the opposite of self-blame. It is a recognition that we have been innocent from the beginning. Redemption is an ongoing celebratory baptism in the waters of grace.
Redemption is the act or process of being redeemed
I read an article in Friends Journal about the author’s view of redemption as a symbol or experience of the grace offered by God. It made me remember a quote from Grace Blindell (see below) which I had to go look up about how each of us see what we’re experiencing through our own world view – created through our experiences, privileges, culture – and how we need to open our boundaries and views.
The idea that there is that of God, or the Divine – or the possibility of that – in each of us is fundamental to Quaker beliefs. All things are sacred and worthy of respect and care.
And now at this critical point in time, when our outdated world view no longer satisfies, comes this breakthrough: science and mysticism speaking with one voice, the rediscovery of our own (Christian) creation-centred and mystical tradition, and the recognition of the spiritual wisdoms of the native traditions. All uniting and all challenging in a profound way our narrowly drawn boundaries. Are we willing to open ourselves to this wider vision, to cease our urge to control and dominate, to listen instead to our hearts, to recognise again the integrity and sacredness of this planet which we have so abused? This means entering into a new relationship with ‘our Mother the Earth’, it means seeing ourselves again in a cosmic context, a larger perspective, which includes fire-ball, galaxy, planet and all other life forms. If we can move from our ‘human-sized’ viewpoint and look instead from the cosmic viewpoint, there is a sudden and dramatic widening of the lens through which we look. Redemption is seen to be for all creation, and our human story, far from being diminished, is incorporated in the whole drama of an emerging universe.
Final thoughts
But from those two more serious threads, I began to remember a Science Fiction or Fantasy novel in which a demon was captured and taken to a monastery where the monks were thrilled.
When their willingness to take responsibility for a powerful destructive creature was queried, the response was that now they could dedicate themselves to discovering if indeed all creatures could be redeemed.
- How often do we dismiss someone who has hurt us, or proven themselves untrustworthy in the past too quickly?
- How often do we presume that they won’t change?
- Are we happy to presume that we deserve redemption, but not offer that to others?
Wendrie Heywood
MBS Founder
